In the Land of the Red Queen
by Rasial
Summary: As their quest to destroy the weaponmachines takes them to the Red Land, Elspeth and Dameon cannot resist the opportunity to help their friend Matthew, who has been sentenced to death... brief Elspeth/Dameon
1. Chapter 1

**In the Land of the Red Queen**

_When their quest to destroy the weaponmachines takes them to the Red Land, Elspeth and Dameon cannot resist the chance to help Matthew, who has been sentenced to death… Elspeth/Dameon_

The hard-beaten path of red earth coiled, making square alcoves around what might have been a windowless, sprawling inner building. A thick, stout wall rose on the other side, holding us inside the courtyard maze. The daubed stone used in these constructions was an earthenware colour, similar to the ground beneath us, and because of all the angular turns, I could only see a few steps in-front or behind us at any time.

All this sameness was making me dizzy.

I would have loved to send my mind out to check on the others, or just to soar away from this stifling monotony, but the taint in the walls was just as strong as Jow had warned it would be. I was not sure I would even be able to reach Dameon beside me if we had an urgent need for silent communication. He strode along, trying to look able-bodied, knowing that his milk-white eyes would instantly ruin our slave disguise if anyone looked too closely. People might tolerate, even desire a mute slave like Gilaine, but they would never purchase a blind one.

I tried to concentrate on the directions Jow had given us. If we had any hope of reaching Matthew, we must do it before sundown, when the overseers would transfer him to the heavily-guarded cage reserved for the Entina pit miners. I had hoped that I might be able to reach the mind of the Entina, even if we failed to spring Matthew from his cell in time, but Jow had only scowled and said "It's eaten Beastspeakers before."

There was something warming about the fact that Matthew had organised the Talented slaves into guilds, each with their specific tasks in their meagre resistance group. It was like a small graft of Obernewtyn had been carried across the waves and had flourished on this hot, distant shore. Tears pricked my eyes as I imagined a future where Talents and their practices would spread throughout all the inhabited lands. Dameon turned his head towards me, puzzled, and I realised that as with demon bands, the taint must not be as inhibiting for empaths.

"Homesick?" he asked.  
>I smiled. "Always."<p>

I sobered at the sight of shadows beginning to gather in the deeper corners. We had to hurry. In truth, we had precious little time to detour from our quest, and the others had only agreed to it when they saw that Dameon and I would not be budged.

"What if the two are intertwined?" I had argued. "Saving Matthew might be integral in some way to finding the weaponmachines." I reminded them that it had been so before; in setting forth on Maryon's quests, I had often discovered signs or people I needed in order to walk the blackroad.  
>I held back the information that Atthis had once claimed to be behind many of Maryon's dual-purpose futuretellings, secretly directing my path from afar.<p>

The others were right – it was indulgent that Dameon and I set our love for Matthew above the lives of every living creature – but it seemed so serendipitous that we arrived just when he had need of us, that we had to try. A cold, cruel part of myself knew that if we failed tonight, we would not have time to concoct another plan on the morrow. We would have no choice but to continue on to the Land of the White Lords and leave Matthew to his fate.

Dameon reached out to grasp my wrist. "Two men are coming. One is surly and proud, the other craven and agitated."

I gulped. An overseer! Slaves were allowed to come and go as they pleased outside of their work hours, but anyone loitering or moving about in suspicious groups would be investigated, and one look at Dameon would tell them we were not slaves.

"Quick!" I hissed. "Into the corner!" I half-dragged the bemused empath into the shade. Remembering Domick pretending that I was his consort in The Good Egg all those years ago, I put my back to the wall, wrenching Dameon closer to me.

"Put your arm around me!" Dameon gave me a quizzical smile, and extended his arm around my shoulder gracefully as though he was going to dance with me. I gave a sigh of irritation, thinking that I was silly to imagine that the gentle guildmaster would have any idea of what was required. I doubted he had a lecherous or fiery bone in his body.

His expression flickered for a moment.

Then he leaned in to me, his lips a finger's breadth from mine. As the overseer came around the corner, I forced myself to giggle in what I hoped was a flirtaceous way. Springing like a fangcat, Dameon grasped me by the hip and ran his hand smoothly down my thigh, wrapping my leg and my bunched skirts around him and burying his face in my neck. Mildly surprised, I ran my hands across his back and through his hair, trying to muss it up in a convincing fashion.

Glimpsing over his shoulder, I gasped as I saw that the pair had stopped at the opening of the alcove and were watching us. Dameon took the sound as a cue and began ostentatiously kissing down the arch of my neck. My cheeks flushed as his breath tickled my skin. I had a wild notion that Dameon was actually enjoying himself, as though he had heard my thought earlier and was impishly setting out to prove me wrong. The pair watched us more out of sport than any official role, I thought, but it occurred to me that it might look odd that we did not kiss each other's mouths … I reached up and pulled his face down towards mine. Our lips met and I felt a fire rage through me which made me moan aloud. Cheeks burning, I wondered if Dameon had used his Talent to make me produce the noise.

Could empaths do that? I blinked as I found myself absurdly wondering if empath Talents could be applied to bedsports...

After a moment that seemed an embarrassing eternity, the overseer's lackey guffawed and the pair strode along. The moment they had rounded the corner, I wrested myself from Dameon's arms and staggered backward, not sure why I felt so affronted. The ruse had been my idea after all.

Dameon said nothing. He took a deep breath, and I thought I saw the ghost of a smile on his lips.

"Did they suspect anything?" I asked him tersely.  
>"I think we are safe." He answered gently. After a pause, he added "They certainly weren't looking at my eyes."<p>

I felt the flush in my cheeks spread right to the tips of my ears.

"The sun is setting." I said pointedly, and stalked off ahead of him.

The shadows were stretching into long fingers by the time we reached the stairwell entrance. On either side of the archway were the peculiar trees which peppered the Red Land – long trunks that ended in bunches of hard, hairy globes of fruit and a small tuft of fringed leaves. Something about them reminded me of Sador.

"Follow me." I said over my shoulder. Inside, there was a long narrow corridor that stretched in both directions. Immediately ahead was a square hole in the earth with steps cut into it. There was no railing and no light.

I padded gingerly down the stairs, the dank coolness of the cellar taking the red out of my cheeks. There were old crates lined with some sort of husked straw mouldering in bunches about the place which made me think this had not always been a prisoner compound. Perhaps rumours of the Red Queen's return had inspired a spike in slave rebellion, and they had to adapt an older building.

I had reached a corridor with barred metal doors embedded in the rock. The overwhelmingly human musty smell told me this was the prison. I strode past several bolted doorways, trying to augment my appearance so that I appeared to be an overseer. Underground, the taint was weak, but I still lacked the energy to make myself appear as a man. I began to panic as I reached the second last door, and saw only a dark-skinned man with brawny shoulders bent over with his head in his hands. Hopefully Matthew was in the last room…

The man looked up.

_Elspeth?_

His mindvoice wavered as though he feared he was delusional. I pushed his probe out of my head with a gentle nudge and cupped a hand on the lock, pretending to fiddle with a key in the other whilst my probe detected how the lock worked. It was heavy, but very old and simple, and clicked in a matter of moments. The rusted metal door creaked noisily as I swung it open.

"Move!" I said sharply.

Matthew hung his head, and shuffled forward. I let him go in front of us and hoped it wouldn't be obvious to the other prisoners that he was leading the way. When we were back in the upper level of the compound, Matthew turned sharply and squeezed the air out of me with his embrace.

"I knew." He said fiercely. "I knew ye'd be here one day te rescue me."

My chest tightened and tears rolled down my cheeks, burdened by the knowledge that we had so very nearly not come. He had changed much from his time in the Red Land, he was as tanned and fit as we had seen in true-dreams, but his face was also gruff with the beginnings of a beard, and his face seemed longer and more serious.

"We're so glad to see you." I said, hardly able to draw myself away from him.

"We?" Matthew looked at me sharply. I turned.

_There was no one behind me._

"Dameon was with me!" I hissed. A look of horror swelled in Matthew's eyes.  
>"When did ye last see him?"<p>

I faltered. I had been deliberately_ not_ looking at Dameon since we had kissed in the courtyard.

"Oh Elspeth," Matthew said faintly, "how could ye, of all people, nowt keep a closer eye on him? It's not like he ken protect himself." I raged inwardly at my own childish impulse that had made me snub him. We hurriedly retraced my steps, but could find no sign of him.

"It doesn't make any sense." I said desperately. "He was just a few steps behind me. Why take Dameon, and not take me? And why has no one sounded an alarm?"

Matthew scratched at his newling beard, a mannerism unfamiliar to me. I felt my eyes tear, and realised it hurt me to think of all the little ways we both must have changed since we last saw each other.

"Ye have a point. This place should be crawlin' with overseers by now. Perhaps it was nowt an overseer that took him, but another slave?"

My shoulders slumped. "Then how will we find him?"

Just then we heard voices up the corridor. "This way." He said, and ducked out of an opening the size of a small window. It was on dusk outside and I was surprised to see the gentle wink of open fires at even intervals along the outer wall. Matthew led the way across a raised wall and then a rooftop, surefooted as a cat. I began wildly trying to coerce minds away from noticing us, but to my surprise, not a soul in the labyrinthine courtyards looked up. I tried to swallow my jittery nerves and concentrate on my balancing act, when Matthew leapt down and landed softly in the sand.

We were near an outer gate, but we had entered from the northern port. This gate was inland and faced south to the desert dunes. I turned to ask Matthew what we were doing here, when he went down a side alley, almost disappearing in the darkness. I hurried after him, and almost screamed aloud as a hand reached out and pulled me sideways into a doorway.

"Elspeth! It is good to see you, it has been so long." It was dark, but I knew that mindvoice. Gilaine.  
>"I am glad of it too." I sent. "But I bring bad news." I recounted everything that had happened since we had spoken to Jow. Gilaine glimpsed an unguarded recollection of my awkward encounter with Dameon, and I felt her lips curve into her a gentle smile. But her face fell as I explained Dameon's silent disappearance. She faresent Matthew, who was setting up a curious shuttered lamp on a table behind her, but I could hear her because she was still holding my hand.<p>

"Salamander was at the port today – Jow saw him not long after Elspeth came through."  
>Matthew cursed. "Tha' settles it then. He's got Dameon. That's why he dinna raise the alarm." He startled us by suddenly punching his fist into the wall of the hovel. He braced himself on a forearm and leaned against the cool daubed wall. "This is too much."<p>

I was alarmed at his reaction, but being a slave for years must make one hate slavers all the more.  
>"He might not have Dameon." I reassured him. "Surely Salamander's not the only one…"<br>Matthew raised up a hand. "You know what he's like, Elspeth. The minute he recognised Dameon, he'd have been rubbing his perfect golden paws together…"

Recognised him? I staggered back, and had to sit down on a rough stool to keep from fainting.

_He meant Ariel._

"Ariel is Salamander?" I could scarcely breathe.  
>Matthew cocked his head like a sparrow. "Ye dinna know?" It was all I could do to shake my head, but it all made terrible sense. It was a theory we had skirted before: Salamander's raids had begun about the time Ariel had started travelling for the Herders. And they had shared a habitation on Norse Island. I knew Ariel had come to the Red Lands for the same reason I had; he would delight in any way he could get to me. Perhaps he already knew I was here…<p>

I clutched at one last chance that Matthew could be wrong. He hated Ariel with a violent passion and might simply be willing to attribute slavery to him as one more evil.  
>"Daffyd said Salamander was dark-skinned, like a Sadorian." Or a Gadfian, I thought privately. "You can't find one much paler than Ariel." Gilaine's mind burst with so many stirred memories at the mention of Daffyd's name I almost dropped her hand.<p>

Matthew shook his head. "The other slavers are dark, but he goes about cloaked to th' eyes, so you wouldna ken what colour he was. But the slave maids he hand-picks to wait on him whisper that he's as pale as the new moon." An angry flicker behind Matthew's shield told me that these slaves were ill-used by Ariel in the same way he had treated the shadows on Herder Isle. My heart sank.

" But what of the testimony of Daffyd's witness?"

Matthew thought for a moment "Who's to say but he maun dye his skin as we do when we pretend to be halfbreeds? When he first began, perhaps he feared bein' discovered, and so used the dye. But now, with his stronghold at th' palace, he's relaxed. Probably chummin' up to the White Lords so he goes about paler now…"

I gasped as a much more profound thought occurred to me:  
><em><br>I needed Dameon to reach the weaponmachines! If Ariel had Dameon, I had failed in my quest.  
><em> 

Doubling over, I slid off the stool and wretched my guts up on the floor of the hovel. Gilaine gently rested a hand on my back, but I would not be consoled. I began to sob so hard that Matthew tried to stifle the sound with a bearhug, lest we be discovered.

"Dinna worry, Elspethelf." Matthew sent to me, as though he was trying to quieten a babe "with you here, we'll be able to rescue Dameon." His deep-seated belief in me just made me cry all the harder, until I was croaking hysterically over and over, "The Hy'raka! He's won!"

Just then, a metallic bell clanged a deep note, which reverberated off the walls. Then another peal, then another. Gilaine and Matthew looked at each other in dismay.

Gillane's hand was poised on my shoulder still so I heard the thought:

_That means they've caught a talented Misfit!_


	2. Chapter 2

There were many people gathered in the square.

"Executions are rare here." Gilaine informed me, her bare arm pressed against mine in throng of people. "We are too useful a commodity." she sent sadly. From a slaver's point of view, a Talented Misfit was the most dangerous type of slave: their bodies could be obeying orders whilst their minds organised rebellion. With the Entina pit available to take any regular rebels, I thought darkly, no wonder executions were reserved only for those dangerous few who must be disposed of quickly.

I shuddered, trying to remain composed enough to think of a plan. Matthew had stayed behind in the hovel under protest, and only because I had pointed out that if he were recognised, he would endanger any rescue operation I could muster. But I was not yet sure what I could do, and even if I managed to free Dameon, where could I possibly run with him in this crowd?

There was a raised wooden dais illuminated by ensconced torches. A tall machine made of wood, with a metal blade affixed to its height was in the centre of the stage, and a few squat woven stools sat to one side of it. Two burly men sat on them with arms folded, but the third was empty. "Sometimes Salamander sits there." Gilaine's mind whispered.

The younger of the two overseers looked out over the sea of faces, and then stood up, brushing the sand dust off his clothes, and came to address the crowd with a cruel smile. Silence spread like a wave."We have gathered you here to witness the death of a heinous plotter and traitor to our lands, guilty of that vilest of acts – witchcraft!" a gasp went up about the crowd. He twisted his lip. "Bring out the condemned!"

A guard brought out the chained prisoner, whose face was hidden by a black sack. I tried to access Dameon's mind, but my probe wasn't locating, there was a buzzing static which told me the prisoner was wearing a demon band, or something like it. But as they shuffled forward, I realised something was wrong. The prisoner wasn't tall enough to be Dameon!

But then who could the Misfit be? Their hands were pale, whoever they were. I looked at Gilaine but she simply sent "I do not know. I don't think it is one of us. But surely a Misfit still needs our help?"

Her gentle reproach lit a fire under me. I had been so caught up in fate and the pressing need of our quest, I had quite forgotten that a person – a Talented Misfit – was about to be executed unless I did something. I started weaving closer to the front of the crowd, dragging Gilaine behind me. The guard was now approaching the dais, and the prisoner was evidently struggling. As the whole guard train stumbled, the prisoner fell and the sack slid forward. I got a glimpse of long, red hair.

_Dragon. _

They pushed her roughly up the stairs and then began strapping her facedown into the tall wooden machine. I could see her wrists struggling against the bindings, and the guard gave her a sharp blow across the back of her head. I suppressed a wave of nausea as I imagined what have happened to the others waiting with her, and sent urgently to Gilaine: "That machine – what does it do?" she simply sent me back a memory of that blade, sliding down on a rope and slicing across the victim's neck, cutting head from body. There was a sickening thud as the black bag fell on the floor.

I watched in a red haze as the overseer raised his hand to the crowd, and then turned over his shoulder to see if Dragon was securely in place. The guards stepped back from her, laughing to hear the snarling sounds coming from the bag. The overseer looked out to the crowd, after a showman's pause, dropped his hand.

The blade fell.

"No!" I screamed, feeling the surge of my black sword inside me. It spun out like a whip and for a terrifying moment I thought I might have killed Dragon myself. I lurched forward, steadying myself of Gilaine, as someone screamed.

"A witch!" said one of the terrified slaves. I followed her pointing finger.

My sword had shattered the blade mid-flight into a thousand metal splinters. The overseers had jumped off the dais in fright, and were picking shards of metal out of their arms. In a flash, someone ran nimbly over the outer wall fence and swooped down on the prostrate Dragon, cutting her tetherings with a knife. It was Matthew.

"Behold!" he said, pulling the sack off Dragon's head and shuffling her forward into the light. "They were tryin' to murder the Red Queen!" He wrenched something from around her neck and then her hair fluttered out in the warm desert air. There was no mistaking who she was.

On impulse, I reached out to a mind not far from mine, and coerced them.  
>"Long live the Queen!" called the middle-aged slave with shaggy brown hair.<br>"Long live the Queen!" answered someone in the back of their own accord.

A chorus of cheers and rumbling swelled in the assembly before us, and although they were receptive, it was unclear whether they yet believed Dragon was their long lost Queen. The overseers made to scramble onto the stage and grab Matthew and Dragon, but half-way they cowered back in fright, cringing as though something fearful was after them.

I chuckled. Dragon must be coercing them.

I pushed my way to the front of the crowd, Gilaine in tow. I saw others move, and was surprised to see Jow materialise out of the shadows. We ranged around the foot of the dais, between her and the crowd.

"Elspeth!" Dragon cried as she saw me.

Matthew stood protectively beside her with a dagger in his hand, every muscle rigid. His voice rang out: "Will ye nowt hear what yer Queen commands of ye?"

Jow and Analivia pushed through the crowd and threw a bundle to me, wrapped in cloth. All at once I knew what it was, and who I needed to give it to. I scaled the stage and bowed before Dragon, letting her open the parcel and draw forth the stone sword. She held it fiercely above her head.

Silence swept through the crowd, and one by one, the slaves dropped to their knees, bowing.

"What do you want of us?" A young blonde slave at the front asked plaintively.

I was fearful of what Dragon would reply – for all she was the daughter of a queen, she was still part-wild, unused to courtesies and crowds, but a curious knowing sparkled in her eyes.

All at once, I felt certain that when she had awoken from her coma,she had remembered whatever it was she had kept locked behind the wall of her mind.

"My people." She said, her voice somehow richer "I come to fulfil a promise. A promise made by my mother, Queen Ulaanbria. I speak the words. I want you to rise and be free!"

The slaves stood as one.

"To the Palace!" she cried, waving the stone sword in the air. The slaves turned and crushed through the courtyards, thundering in the direction of the palace. Dragon sprang from the stage like a warrior with Matthew in tow, and the pair raced to the front of the surging mass.

Left alone in the empty square, Gilaine, Jow, Analivia and I looked at each other.

"Where is Salamander's stronghold?" I asked sharply.  
>Jow turned to look at me. "By the palace."<p>

My eyes widened. "We must go. Now." 


	3. Chapter 3

Jow led us stealthily around the curve of a river, which parted the palace grounds. Above the water on trellises was a garden: sweet smelling ivy vines with small white flowers hanging in sprays out of a series of earthenware pots. Something about them made me uncomfortable; they were too well-tended to be beautiful.

Ariel's house had red stone colonnades which ringed the building in a kind of open courtyard or veranda, with large windows on one side looking out to the desert dunes beyond. Smaller windows faced back towards the palace, where there was much shouting and flickering light. Jow and Gilaine had been itching to assist Dragon in the rising and to make sure the rest of their Talented friends and rebels were okay, but I had assured them that the fate of all was at stake if we did not rescue Dameon. Privately, I felt that, having seen the whole thing rumble to life, there was no stopping Dragon's ascension now; they did not need our help. Another prophecy had been fulfilled.

In a way, it made me feel old, like one chapter of my life was finally closed. No doubt Dragon and Matthew would stay on in the Red Land, restoring order and peace, doing good work – far away from Obernewtyn, and far away from my quest. Here, I had to leave Matthew and Dragon behind: losing two so dear to me, two that I had already endured losing once.

But they were free, with a full life of love ahead of them, if I had understood the way they had looked at each other on the dais. I could wish them no more than that.

Over the static buzz of the running water, I could sense there were living things watching us from inside the house. "I think Ariel keeps dogs." I sent to Jow.

Jow shook his head. "Wild dogs. Jackyls"

My heart sank. It was much harder to win the affection of a wild creature, especially those that ran in packs. The image Jow had shown me in my mind was of a sleek black-furred animal similar to the Brildane but with larger ears. They seemed generally smaller than the wolves, but if Ariel had tortured them they might be just as fierce…

I heard a low howl. It was as despairing as the moon's face, a lamentation.

Then the jackyls ran straight for us. They had somehow gotten outside! As we ran down the leeside of the stronghold, I tried to beastspeak the jackyl pursuing me, but it just gave off a nervous sort of energy, like breathy laughter.

Analivia yelled at me. "Get inside Elspeth! We'll draw them out and then double-back." She circled me and tried to draw my jackal's attention. Instead of trying to beastspeak, I coerced the jackyl to make it not see or smell me for a moment. It blinked, and then plunged after Analivia and the others over the hill.

As I got up to the doors of the house, I noticed a flap of wood on a hinge in the wall which must have allowed the jackyls out. I kept alert for other traps or surprises. Ariel would know I was coming now, and perhaps I jeopardised all of humanity by wandering into his house like a fly into the web of a spider. But if I did not reclaim Dameon, our quest was already forfeited, so what did it matter? Fate would assure that I would succeed, or else I had already lost and nothing would ever matter again.

It felt queer to be so brazen in the face of danger. I looked around Ariel's stronghold, and saw a lavishly decorated parlour with tapestries and fruit in guilded bowls. But there were also touches that were uniquely Ariel – a dog-sized skull, perfectly assembled on a shelf, a coiled whip over a private bar, and a few books which looked to me to be purloined from his days with the Faction.

There were several bedrooms, two washing chambers, one with a deep pool, lined with painted pottery squares, and a room that looked as though it had been recently vacated by slaves – there were several sleeping mats and a privy pot in the corner.

It took me several searchings of the house to find a trapdoor in one of the bedrooms, leading down into a cellar. The walls were lit with fiery torches, which told me that I was not alone in this part of the house. Instinctively I cloaked myself so that I would be undetectable by sensitive minds.

As the cellar branched into two corridors, I cursed Ariel's love of underground lairs, and tried tentatively to send out my mind. Surprisingly, these walls of grey stone were less tainted than the red stone used in the walls of the Red City, and I wondered if Ariel had once again managed to sniff out the ruins of an old Beforetime seat of power to build on.

I pressed my ear to a heavy wooden door, and heard shrill sounds of panic inside. I tried to make my mind go through the door at the keyhole.

Dameon's long form was tied into a chair. Blood on his clothes and the floor around him told me that he had been tortured. But it was the sound of his soft voice babbling and cracking in hysteria that swelled me with pity.

His head seemed to jerk towards the door for a moment.

"Elspethlove, no! He will hurt you, he's hurting you… Don't touch her!" His voice became wrathful and loud for a moment, then his voice dropped again and became gentle. "Please, leave her now, try me instead. I am strong; I will be fun to break."

I could see no one in the room that he might have been talking to. Carefully, I scanned the room, but could find no signs of life other than Dameon.

I stole into the room, still trembling in expectation of a trap. I looked for trip-wires or depressions in the floor, or evidence of weaponmachines or Beforetime poisons, but I could see nothing. It was just a cellar, with some tools attached to a board on the wall.

Torture implements.

I shuddered. Moving over to Dameon, I was overwhelmed by helpless fury at the sight of him. He had been cut and burned in so many places under his clothes. I smoothed his hair and pressed my lips against his forehead.

"Not this." Dameon said in a low voice, pulling away from me. "I will not be undone by this! I am not some fond fool, Ariel!"

I began to weep, my tears falling forward on his shirt. I cupped his face in my hands gently and tried not to startle him. "Dameon." I said as softly as I could. "Dear Dameon, it's me, Elspeth. Come on now, we have to go." He seemed to look into my eyes searchingly, a look black with longing, and then shook his head sadly."

"This is not my Elspeth." He said simply, to the empty space of the cellar. "She does not know I love her; so she has no cause to be so gentle. And with her burden, she cannot come to rescue me."

My ears rang at his reasoning. I barely knew where to begin: should I be horrified that he thought I would leave him so easily to this fate, or glad, or sad to know that my dear friend loved me? I began to rationalise it away; Dameon had clearly been tortured and was delusional still, and could not be held accountable for what he was saying. But something in me sang with awareness – the hundred looks that had passed between Rushton and he, his long sojourn in the desert lands, the wall he kept up permanently between us.

"I cannot lead you to what you seek, Ariel, so there is no point in playing these mindgames. Kill me and have done with it." Dameon said with the air of having closed a guildmerge discussion.

I undid his bindings, but he refused to move from the chair. I could coerce him to walk if I got past his shield, but his feet might have been damaged in torture session. It was all I could do not to blubber at his ridiculous bravery and refusal to believe I was here.

I had no choice: I entered his mind.

Bypassing the strong outer emotional wall, I could see he was using the idea that I had abandoned him, that I always would abandon him, to resist Ariel's special, sick brand of coercive torture. He had convinced himself that it was not possible that I would ever be in this cellar, so that he would not believe the images of Ariel torturing me, or raping me, or even me offering myself to him that Ariel had played and replayed in his mind.

I found I could not crack his subconscious shield; as an empath guildmaster, his ability to read and use the subconscious far outweighed mine. There was only one more thing I could think of to make Dameon recognise me.

I opened my mind to him.

I felt the familiar rush of thoughts and images that I now knew to associate with mindbonding. I tried to make myself a passive conduit between us. I felt Dameon's fascination with the gritty sands of Sador, the way the earth brushed his face as though it was coming up to greet him. I smelled the warm hay of the Obernewtyn farms, and felt Faraf's fur between my fingers, marvelling at her true gentleness. I felt his desire while kissing the white arch of my neck. I felt his deep agony at the death of the Kasanda, and how it had entangled itself with his despair at my choice of Rushton over him. Finally, I felt, somewhere in the depths of my soul, Dameon's knowledge that I had never really known he loved me, and that I had never seen him as a man or a lover – which he seemed to believe was because he was blind.

Staggering, I was suddenly in some place inside Dameon's mind that smelled of minerals and salt, and heard the gentle shushing of water lapping in and out. We must be on a beach. Someone reached out and took my hand.

"It is beautiful to be here with you." Dameon whispered. He kissed the back of my hand softly.  
>"You know this is no dream." I told him.<br>"I know." Dameon sighed. "I am about to enter the mindstream. Maryon told me about it. Nothing else could give this wondrous singing feeling."

"No, Dameon." I said sharply. "There is something else that sings with memories. Mindbonding. All the memories you experienced were memories of mine, weren't they?"  
>"Yes, but I would expect that thinking of you brought them to the surface." He paused. "The alternative, my dear, is that you mindbonded with me, and we both know that would not happen."<br>"Wouldn't it?" I asked, hurt all of a sudden by his surety of my lack of feeling. "Do you believe I am so callous that I am incapable of loving you?"  
>"No." He laughed and reached out to touch my hair fondly, as though it were an old familiar gesture. "There is nothing callous about you, my girl, for all they believe you are hard and cold. You pulse with fire for those that you love. But you love Rushton. Not me."<p>

"Rushton is my past." I said bitterly. "Matthew and Dragon are gone. Obernewtyn is gone. You are the only one I love who is part of my future." Startling myself, I reached out into the darkness for him. He put his arms around me and I let all my fears and bitter loves pour out into our kiss.

"Elspeth?" Dameon's tone of voice told me he had only just recognised me. "Where are we?"  
>"Come, love." I said. "We have to wake."<p>

My eyes watered as I adjusted to having sight again. Dameon was on his feet, grimacing with pain. I put a hand down to his wounds but his face turned sharply towards the door.

"Run." He breathed.

Before me stood the most beautiful man I had ever seen. His sultry lips had a delicious pout, his gold-spun hair was short with a wave or two soft on the crown of his head. His eyes sparkled with genuine joy at seeing me.

"Why Elspeth." Ariel's voice purred. "How nice of you to come." 


End file.
